What a disappointment Jan Butter has been. Yes, there have been some really notable and important matters discussed, but Butter has sought to write out the very important discussions on the future direction and management of the Communion and the clear message on sexual morality and Western, and particularly TEC departures from it.

Jan’s oleaginous reports are worthy of the Episcopal News Service for their propaganda and this is compounded by castigating bloggers who as far as I can see are very necessary sources of news when faced with the pliant and greasy reports of ACNS and now ENS.

But then I suppose Jan Butter knows on which side his bread is buttered. Which way will it fall do you suppose - butter side up or down?

I had the experience of being famous for a few months in England and found that in each and every instance, with a single exception, the picture of me and my life wasn’t all that true to life, mainly because I was merely a screen onto which the interviewer/reporter projected his or her own agenda. Ms Butter’s article is a paradigmatic example of what I experienced from the side of the person about whom the article is written. She tirelessly pushes an agenda in this soi-disant ‘reflection’. Alas, it is merely the ‘reflection’ she sees in the mirror of her projections, produced par une femme d’un certain age still stuck in the women’s movement the 1970s and 80s, writing for her consoeurs and those males who might want to listen to her as she impresses her friends with her prophetic skills.

My reaction to the picture was… oh, a man wrote that stuff? Really? What a surprise. I revise my comment thusly, “par un homme d’un certain age still stuck in the women’s movement the 1970s and 80s, writing for his consoeurs and those males who might want to listen to him as he impresses his friends with his prophetic skills.”

Absent was any mention of searching questions from the podium; questions such as ‘if numbers of African Christians are soaring, why are several countries where they live still suffering from conflict, corruption and poverty?’

He just doesn’t get it, does he?

I sympathize with his lament that, in the media, the good that is being done by African bishops is being overshadowed by the sexuality debate. It makes me wonder, is there no room here for the realization that the African churches contain the majority of the world’s Anglicans, and they are building churches faster that TEC is losing them? Perhaps they are teaching the Good News of the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ - what a concept!

Yes, it does all seem a bit defensive and partisan. So it’s one ACO view that it’s a good thing that at least we’re floating as we burn.

Otto Neurath famously said, “We are like seafarers, who must rebuild their ship in open sea”. This final metaphor in Jan’s opinion piece presented a rather more sorrowful view, a wooden vessel that is being consumed by flames but that sails on regardless.

Is he aware, as he celebrates the Martyrs of Uganda, that they burned for refusing the king’s homosexual demands? And surely he must be aware of the damage done to African evangelism and mission by the libertine tilt of Western Anglicans.